


world is caving

by carolinaa



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Dissociation, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Violence, Working title: Peter Parker Has A Pretty Bad Start To His Summer Vacation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-01
Updated: 2018-05-01
Packaged: 2019-04-30 15:00:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14499531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/carolinaa/pseuds/carolinaa
Summary: Peter becomes the target of a shady organization set to kill him. Given the option, he would be at home watching Flip or Flop with May, instead of slowly descending into pure terror.But, life just be like that sometimes.





	world is caving

“Someone should really drive you home,” Tony insists.

“Guys. I don’t live far away,” Peter says. “I can swing there in like, ten minutes, tops. Maybe twenty, because I was gonna get a bagel.”

“It’s a ways away, and you’re nine years old.” Clint crosses his arms, clearly not open to discussion. It’s true that the baddies today had seemed to be unusually focused on getting to Peter specifically--but he doesn’t think any supervillain is going to apprehend him as he takes the subway home.

“Yeah, but I have big kid money. For my bagel that I want.” If he hurries, he can get there before they close. He figures he has about half an hour to work with, if the Avengers stop whining at him.

He isn’t planning on getting up to any shenanigans in Queens tonight, anyway. It’s been a long day, with most of the team coming together for damage control. The majority of them will hopefully be sticking around for a couple days in New York to handle cleanup. Currently, Natasha is sporting a cut down her face and looks like she would murder sixteen people if anyone touched her, Tony’s suit is crumpled in places and he’s clearly fighting a migraine, and Rhodes is already passed out on the couch. They all need a night off (Happy’s already retired for the evening, which is why the ride thing became an issue), but Peter still needs to get home.

“At least let me give you a ride to the subway station?” Clint compromises. “It’s a few blocks away.”

“I mean, if it’ll help you sleep better.” Peter rolls his eyes, because nobody can see the slight beneath his mask. “Can we get a bagel on the way?”

“Can you shut up about the fucking bagel?” Natasha snarls, snapping her hands down from where they’ve been poking at her face injuries, and turning to look at him with the rage of a thousand suns.

Peter gives her a finger gun in the affirmative and ducks down the hall to go get changed before she can get angrier. He had left his backpack in the hallway earlier, and he pulls his change of clothes out of it and slips into the nearest bathroom.

After pulling his sweatshirt over his head, Peter feels a little more inconspicuous. Maybe today has rattled him a little more than he thought--he’s pretty sure that it wasn’t just his paranoia speaking when he started to notice that he was getting targeted a lot more than the others. Right now though, he’s safe from that, just another face in the crowd. He doesn’t look like someone who could secretly be Spider-Man, he’s just a scrawny teenager with a bruise on his jaw. Taking a deep breath, he squares his shoulders and goes back out to the common room.

He follows Clint down to the garage, the two of them chatting about some of the events of the day. When they get onto the motorcycle, Clint gets a little more serious, and doesn’t start up the bike right away. Instead, he turns and asks, “Have you been doing okay lately?”

Peter sort of stumbles over his answer, because the question is completely out of left field. “Yeah. What makes you ask that, Dad?”

“I just wanted to check in. We worry. Well, most of us do.” Clint turns the key in the ignition, and the new task of finding the garage door opener distracts Clint from Peter’s confused reaction. Peter’s aware of the fact that Natasha isn’t thrilled that she’s working with a teenager, but he’d never really considered the fact that the rest of them would _worry_ about him. Like he needs babying. “School’s over now, right?” Clint asks, and turns back around in his seat.

“Yeah, our last day was Wednesday.” He doesn’t get too annoyed with Clint’s lack of response after that--the roar of the motorcycle is probably taking away any possibility of Clint’s hearing aids allowing him to carry on the conversation at hand. Peter sticks a hand to the back of Clint’s jacket for safety, but Clint looks over his shoulder accusingly and Peter sighs and wraps his arms around Clint’s waist, at least to keep up appearances that Peter doesn’t have superpowers.

The ride is short. As the bike rolls to a stop by the stairs heading down into the subway, Peter hops off the back and waves. “Thanks for the lift, I appreciate it.”

Clint nods, gives a half-smile. “Text us when you get home.”

Peter agrees, digs his subway card out of his pocket, and goes down the stairs.

 

The subway is crowded, even at one in the morning, but it gets less so as they move away from Stark Tower and the center of the city. They’re only in Midtown by the time he starts to yawn, and soon he’s completely zonked out.

The announcer voice nudges him awake a little while later, and he blinks sleepily to see that the car he’s in is mostly empty, a few people are just getting off the train, leaving just one other guy across the car, who’s unzipping his backpack. “Hey!” Peter snaps at the guy, who’s sticking his hand in and pulling out a handful of red and blue spandex. “Dude, what the hell?”

“You’re him,” the guy says ominously, and Peter’s heart skips. This means that the strange man had been _looking_ for Spider-Man, that it isn’t some broke guy looking for spare change, that Peter is being targeted. More urgently, this means that Peter is totally screwed.

Peter rips his backpack away from the man, stuffs the suit back inside, then scrambles away, the door still open at his back and allowing him to get out. The subway station is near deserted, which allows him to run as fast as he needs to. He almost trips up the concrete stairs, but then he’s up above ground and taking off down the block, crossing streets in a random order, trying to get a hold on his cell phone so that he can call someone for help (normally, he would handle this by himself, but he gets the feeling something’s going to happen that he won’t be able to deal with, and he can’t just run home and bring a murderer back to where May is).

The man is gaining on him, hissing threats that make Peter’s heart jump in his throat. He’s hungry, exhausted, not equipped with webs, and in no mood to be running for his life.

Yet here he is.

Finally, he gets his phone out and dials Tony as fast as he can--Tony is the most likely to be awake--and sure enough, the call picks up right away. “Spidey? Everything okay?”

“Let’s just say things are not ideal.” Peter’s heavy breathing is probably a little worrying on its own. He zigzags across the street, almost getting hit by a car in the process, but it stalls his pursuer a little. “Can you come get me?”

“I’m tracking your location, I’ll be there soon,” Tony says immediately, and Peter huffs a sigh of relief, flinging himself into the next alley and turning to fight. He can hold his own for a little while.

The man skids to a stop at the entrance of the alleyway, and immediately throws himself at Peter with inhuman speed. He’s almost a blur, and it’s only Peter’s enhanced reflexes that keep him from getting knocked to the ground. A gunshot rings, and Peter ducks just in time. It appears that the guy has a gun. Peter’s day is getting better and better.

Peter’s senses keep him on his feet, and a few minutes of desperately trying to keep out of the way, he gets the opportunity to pin the guy against the wall, seize him by the arm, and twist the gun away from himself. “Who sent you?” he asks frantically.

The man stares him down, struggling violently against Peter’s grip. “Someone who wants to hurt you as much as possible,” he hisses.

He wrenches his arm out of Peter’s grip, and shoves Peter back so hard that Peter finds himself thrown against the opposite wall, gun to his temple and trying not to show how scared he is. There has to be something to do in this situation, but his mind is just running on a loop of sheer panic.

“You’re coming with me,” the man says in a low voice, and a Peter feels a pinprick in his arm. Did he just get drugged? He’s very certain that he’s about to die.

Peter makes a pathetic noise, then clears his throat and says, “I’d rather not,” and knees the guy in the crotch. No superhuman powers could make that any less painful. Peter forces the gun away from himself again, and his attacker seems like he’s losing steam. “Can you just give me a break and tell me who you’re working for? Please?”

“Spidey!” Tony’s voice shouts from the end of the alley. Peter’s safe. Peter just needs to get this guy subdued so he can question him--

With a calm smile, the man looks him in the eye and pulls the trigger, sending the bullet into his own head. Peter screams and reels backwards, away from the spray of blood that comes at his face, and he hears his name being called. It sounds far away, a million miles from where Peter is standing. All he can hear is the echo of the gunshot, and his heart pounding in his ears.

Peter’s been close to this sort of thing before, but the gun had gone off in his _own hand_.

“Peter!” someone’s saying, and then there’s a hand shaking his shoulder. Peter looks towards the owner of the hand. It’s Tony. “Are you hurt?” Tony asks.

Peter shakes his head slowly, still staring at the ground, where is attacker is lying in a _pool of blood_.

“Look at me, kid.” Tony snaps his fingers, and Peter blinks twice, trying to regain focus. “We’re headed to the Tower. Can you walk?”

It takes a few seconds to force his legs to move, but once he does, he doesn’t stop until he’s in Tony’s car, as far away from the alley as possible, shaking slightly from adrenaline and cold. Tony slides in next to him a few minutes later, presumably having done something about any traces Peter left at the scene, and the car begins to drive without a command. Peter doesn’t have the capacity to worry about checking if Happy is driving or not.

“Did he come into your house? Is your aunt safe?” Tony asks.

The mention of Aunt May makes Peter start to shake even more, but he knows he has to answer and worry about getting in touch with her later. He can’t allow anyone to follow him back to her. “He didn’t come in,” Peter mumbles. “I was out.”

“You were _out_?” Tony asks. “Even though we told you it wasn’t safe for you?”

“I hadn’t gotten home yet,” he says, pleading. He just wants quiet.

“He came at you on the subway? Did you aggravate him?”

“No, I was just--I was asleep, and then he was looking through my stuff, and--”

“With no prompting? You expect me to believe that?”

Not bothering to correct him, Peter stares at his hands the whole drive to the tower, not having any energy to try and argue or even point out that he’s not even wearing the suit. Once the car has parked, Tony says, “The guest room down the hall from Rhodey is all yours,” and Peter is out of there like a shot.

 

“Hey, May,” he breathes into the phone, hoping he doesn’t sound as wrecked as he feels. He’s just taken a shower in which he had to wash someone else’s blood off of his face, and he’s recovering from the drastic turn his night has taken.

“Peter?” she asks. “Are you okay? I’ve been texting you for hours, I thought we agreed to check in more so I knew where you were at.”

“Here I am, checking in,” Peter says, then realizes it sounds sort of snarky and rushes to fix it. “Wait--that sounded--I’m sorry, I forgot about my phone earlier, but--”

“Did something happen?”

Peter wraps an arm around his waist and tries to give himself a hug, which probably looks pretty pathetic. He sure feels pathetic, sitting in the middle of a huge bed in a dark room all by himself, trying not to cry as he calls his aunt. “No, no, nothing happened. It’s just been a _wild_ day, I’m sure you saw on the news…”

“Yeah,” she says, sounding wholly unconvinced. “Where are you?”

“I’m staying over at the Tower, I can head home in the morning.”

“Are you sure you aren’t imposing?”

Peter looks down and finds his hand clenched around the blanket, and he forces himself to relax, unclenching his jaw and loosening the muscles in his shoulders and falling back onto his pillows. “Yeah. He--uh, Mr. Stark invited me. I’m good. It’s all good.”

“Okay. I figured. You know me though, worrywart.” She doesn’t sound like she’s any more assured than before, but she and Peter have gotten to a point where they understand that both of them are just going to be pretty stressed out all the time. “Have a good night, sweetheart.”

“Love you,” Peter says, wishing he was at home and watching Flip or Flop with May.

“Love you too.” May makes an obnoxious kissy noise. “Take care of yourself, okay?”

“You too. Bye.”

He hangs up feeling better. Better enough to pull the covers over him and try to sleep, at least.

 

It’s been a while since Peter got to stay over at the Tower, and the mattress is fantastic, but at eight, his anxiety and a dream about shooting someone in the head wake him and tell him to get up and figure out a safe way home to May. He’s yanking the same shirt on from yesterday when there’s a knock on the door.

“Come in,” he says, inspecting the spot on his arm where he swore he felt he got stabbed with a needle during the altercation. His skin shows no sign of being punctured, though the area is a little sore. Peter decides he probably slept off whatever it was.

The knocker turns out to be Clint, with a white paper bag, and Natasha, clearly with a lot on her mind.

“Morning,” Clint greets Peter cheerfully, shoving the bag towards him.

Peter grins in return. He accepts the bag, and when he finds a bagel inside, sits back down on the bed. “You’re so amazing.”

Clint shrugs. “Hell yeah I am. Stark said you would need a good breakfast. I wasn’t supposed to tell you it was his idea, but here we are.”

Peter digs into the bagel, deciding he needs the strength for whatever interrogation Natasha is here for. “What’s up, Natasha?”

She looks at him carefully, as if deciding what to say. It’s clear that she wants to convey something, but Peter is too busy finishing stuffing his face to read into it. She waits until he’s done chewing a bite, then she strikes. “What happened last night?” she asks bluntly.

The food in his mouth is suddenly too much, but he fights the urge to spit it out. The reminder of the events of the previous night isn’t doing much for his appetite. “A guy on the subway attacked me. And he shot himself when he realized he couldn’t bring me in.”

“You didn’t do anything to provoke him?” Clint asks, raising an eyebrow that mirrors Natasha’s. Peter doesn’t blame anyone for not believing him--he can be pretty insufferable without trying--but he wishes they could trust him on this.

“I wasn’t even wearing the suit.” Peter puts the bagel down.

Natasha looks unimpressed. “He just attacked you,” she states, deadpan and unconvinced.

“He said someone sent him. I don’t know. You think I just _shot_ a guy for _fun_?” Peter asks.

Clint avoids eye contact in favor of stealing a bite of the bagel, but Natasha doesn’t look away. “We just think there’s something you’re not telling us.”

He rubs his eyes and picks up his phone from the nightstand. “There isn’t. I need to get home, May needs me for--whatever. Thanks for breakfast, I gotta jet.”

Ignoring Natasha calling him back, Peter gathers his backpack, puts on his shoes, and then he’s gone, taking off out of Stark Tower.

He doesn’t have enough money to hail a taxi or he would, and he’s not eager to take the subway again. He knows that there’s a chance someone in connection with the man from last night could have eyes on him, so he can’t go home just yet. He takes several detours, winding around big buildings and running through alleyways, and then he finds a secluded area to change into the suit once he’s pretty sure nobody is tailing him. Natasha won’t be thrown off by simple evasive maneuvers, but not even she can keep up with Peter when he’s using his webs.

He ends up perched on the roof of an apartment complex, keeping an ear out for crime. The city seems peaceful, and he’s glad for a break, and he’s just considering breaking into his stash of backpack snacks when something clicks behind him.

Peter freezes. That was definitely a gun. And his spider-sense hadn’t even _gone off_.

“Get your hands where I can see them.”

Is it a cop? It sounds like a cop. Peter’s in the suit, though, there wouldn’t be a cop showing up on the roof to arrest Spider-Man. He slowly raises his hands anyway. “Sure thing, buddy.”

“You’re going to come with me.”

“Am I.” Peter glances about for a safe escape route. He could swing away, but if the person is a good shot, Peter could end up with a bullet in his back. Instead, Peter twists his wrist and sends a web at the gun, yanking it into his own hand and then rolling out of the way to face his assailant.

It isn’t a cop. It’s a guy getting ready to sock Peter in the face, is who it is. Peter trains the gun on him, trying not to let his hand shake. He _hates_ guns. “You know, I have to say you’ve got some guts, trying to use a gun on Spider-Man,” Peter says conversationally.

“ _I_ wasn’t going to use it,” says the guy, and then there’s a pop from somewhere behind Peter. His shoulder erupts in pain, and he makes a strangled noise, almost dropping the gun in his hands.

He rolls out of the way as a second gunshot sounds, glancing over his shoulder to see a window in the opposite building cracked open and the barrel of a rifle poking out of it. He fires his stolen gun towards it, shattering the glass and at least stunning the sniper. Peter lunges forward and grabs his first attacker by the collar, pulling him out of the line of fire.

The guy’s heavy, easily twice Peter’s weight, but Peter webs him to the wall behind the air conditioning vents and asks, “Who sent you, dude?”

“Like I’d tell you,” the man spits.

“So you have no connection at _all_ with the guy who jumped me yesterday? He did a crap job, by the way, are you even trained that well? Because--”

“It’s only a matter of time, Parker,” says the man, and Peter’s blood runs cold. They know his name. This organization knows who he is. No wonder they’d tracked him down so easily. “You’ve got nobody to protect you. You think the Avengers will even realize you’re missing until it’s too late?”

“Of course they will,” Peter says, though his voice is unsure, and the guy sneers at him. “What do you even want?”

“I want to keep you here for another two seconds,” the man says easily.

Ten feet below him, Peter hears a faint beeping noise.

Immediately, he’s running, leaping, swinging away, and the roof erupts in a flaming explosion as his feet leave the roof. He can feel the heat behind him, but his ears are ringing and he doesn’t hear the actual blast.

His shoulder feels like it’s on fire, he’s realizing, the pain just catching up to him as he makes his escape, and he tries to land on a roof but ends up tripping over himself and falling onto his hands and knees. That’s the second time in twenty-four hours that he’s been almost captured. Peter should tell someone. He at least needs to find some way to keep his shoulder from getting infected.

Peter lets himself collapse onto the rooftop. Karen speaks up, saying, “Do you want me to call Mr. Stark?”

He hurts so bad, he accidentally says yes.

The call almost goes to voicemail, but then Tony’s answering and speaking at a million miles an hour. “Hey, I’m just about headed into a meeting, are you in immediate danger or did you just call to chat? This is a big shareholder thing.”

Tony doesn’t often go to meetings, so Peter figures it’s important. And Peter isn’t in _immediate_ danger, exactly. “Oh, it’s no big deal, I’ll call later.”

“Sorry, Spidey,” Tony says, and he does actually sound sorry, but then the line is clicked off and Peter feels more alone than ever. Karen makes a disapproving humming noise.

The pain from his shoulder is beginning to make Peter feel a little woozy.

“Your heart rate is dangerously low. Babysitter protocol activated.” His visuals say that she’s calling Clint.

"Karen, please don’t--”

Clint picks up on the second ring, saying, “Peter?”

“Yo,” Peter says, defeated.

“Where are you?” Clint asks. He doesn’t sound calm in the slightest, and there’s noise in the background like he’s outside, or in the car. “Are you safe?”

“I’m fine.” Peter prods at the gunshot wound in his shoulder and hisses, deciding then to swallow his pride. “Well. I have a bullet in my shoulder, but--”

“Are you stable?” Clint raises his voice to cut him off, maybe Peter’s on speakerphone while Clint drives (Clint has no concept of how loud is too loud because his hearing aids don’t work very well with his shitty cheap cell phone). “Why do you sound like this happens to you a lot? I’m gonna have to talk to Stark about this shit--”

Peter blinks as his vision goes hazy for a moment. It’s strange; he’s dealt with getting shot before, but this is the worst time so far. “Can you come get me?” His voice sounds pathetic, and Clint’s voice softens.

“I’ll be right there. Are you safe for the time being?”

"Yeah, I think so.” Nobody’s come to get him yet.

The next few minutes are a disorienting blur, Peter starting to comprehend his surroundings less and less _._ His shoulder is being gnawed on by a lion, the edge of the roof gives way to a roaring chasm, his skin is a cold blanket that’s only getting heavier by the second. He shakes his head, tries to come back to himself, but then someone’s taking him by the arm and shaking him to get him to _wake up, Peter_ \--

Peter’s vision sharpens enough to allow his shaky hand to find Clint’s strong one. “Hurts,” he rasps, and Clint helps him to his feet.

He doesn’t remember the trip back to the Tower, he just comes back to himself when he’s sitting on the couch in the common room, the suit pulled down to expose his back and allow someone to bandage his shoulder. They’re talking, he can hear the faint hum of their voice, but he just finds himself staring out at nothing, mind blank.

Someone else snaps their fingers in front of his eyes. “Pete,” says their voice.

Peter blinks, turns his head sharply to find that it’s Tony snapping his fingers and Bruce bandaging his shoulder. “Yeah,” Peter says.

“Your entire back is burned. You wanna work on getting away from explosions faster?” Tony snipes. His tone is borderline worried, though, so Peter knows he’s not exactly angry. “I asked if you were in danger, and you said it wasn’t important. It was _this?_ ”

“Sorry.” Peter wonders where his spidey-senses had gone, because he’d barely noticed that the bomb had been _going off underneath him_. “Distracted.”

“What’s going on, Pete?” Bruce asks. His hands are a little tense, it seems, because he pulls a bandage too tight and Peter yelps in response. “Sorry--it’s just. Last night Tony had to come pick you up from what probably looked like a murder scene, and now you’re here with a second-degree burn, and--”

“It’ll heal quickly enough,” Peter mumbles.

“That’s not my _point--_ ” Bruce makes a frustrated noise and seems to be gathering his thoughts. “Is there a connection between these two things?”

“Yeah, the guy today said he was trying to take me in too, like the guy from yesterday.” Peter glares at the floor. “Nobody _believed_ me when I told them what happened yesterday.”

“Spidey, it just doesn’t make sense that some rando would know who you were both in and out of the suit.”

“Well, someone _does_ ,” Peter insists.

“You were in the suit today,” Tony points out.

“Well, yeah, but--”

“I just don’t think your identity is out yet. Okay? Let’s just take it as it comes.” Tony pinches the bridge of his nose like he’s getting a headache, but Peter finds he doesn’t have an ounce of compassion for him.

 

After they finish fixing him up, Bruce and Tony leave him to rest and watch TV. The building is quiet, save for electrical humming, and Peter eventually uncurls himself and pushes himself to his feet. He deserves a snack.

The walk to the kitchen feels like a full mile, but he eventually reaches the fridge and pours himself a glass of orange juice and sits back down on the couch with it to relax, getting out his phone to snapchat Ned back.

A now-familiar clicking noise happens directly next to Peter’s ear, effectively getting his attention. It’s a gun, of course, and Peter hadn’t even noticed anyone coming into the building. Why didn’t his spider-sense work on these guys? Unhelpful.

“Time to come with me, Parker. Quietly.”

Peter’s eyes flicker up to the ceiling, thinking of FRIDAY, but the owner of the gun seems to notice that he’s planning an escape route and grabs Peter by the bad shoulder, which erupts in white-hot pain. “Come on, right now. Don’t try anything.”

There’s not much else to do before he comes up with some plan that will keep him from getting shot. Peter lets himself be pulled towards the elevator, because he’s in too much pain to be any good at fighting, much less escaping from a bad guy. It’s not helping that whoever it is keeps digging his palm into the bullet wound on purpose.

He’s dropped his juice, Peter realizes sadly.

Somewhere along the way, he stumbles, blacking out for a second, and comes back to himself on the ground. The person behind him snarls, kicking him in the side, as if that’s going to help Peter recover. “I said no dicking around, alright?”

“I literally can’t get up, my dude,” Peter says into the carpet, and then he hears the blessed noise of the elevator opening.

“Step away from him,” says an angry Rhodes voice.

The gun goes off. There’s a scuffle above him for a few minutes, but Peter can’t keep up. He’s exhausted and in pain and he deserves so much better.

There’s more conversation happening above him, but Peter is oblivious to everything until he’s being yanked back to his feet and held at gunpoint again. “Don’t come a step closer,” Peter’s attacker is saying. Peter emits a groan of pain that probably doesn’t help Rhodes feel any better about the situation. “I mean it. Lights-out for Parker if you move.”

“That’s some cliché bullshit,” Peter mumbles. He gets a jab in the bullet wound for his troubles, which isn’t _super_ comfortable.

“How’d you learn his name?” Rhodes demands. Peter really hopes he doesn’t decide to move, he really doesn’t want to get shot in the head today.

"What, like it’s hard? The kid leaves his backpacks _wherever,_ about time he learned the consequences of his actions.”

“He’s fifteen, cut him some slack.” Rhodes’s making some kind of eye contact with Peter, as if Peter’s supposed to psychically understand what he’s thinking. Is Peter responsible for helping get himself out of this mess? Should he be putting up a fight? Also, he’s _sixteen_ now, that must count for something--

“We let him survive this long, didn’t we?”

Peter turns his head and spits blood into the person’s face, then drops like a rock (which isn’t difficult, his knees give out all by themselves). Rhodes lunges forward as the gun fires again, and then it’s over. There’s no fight following. Peter doesn’t quite comprehend anything but Rhodes kneeling down on the floor next to him and reaching to feel his pulse.

“Wait…” The amount of pain Peter’s in is about to make him vomit. “Rhodey--”

“Don’t worry about it. We’re gonna get you to the med wing. Don’t fall asleep, hear me?”

Peter hears him. He falls asleep anyway. Hell yeah, teenage rebellion.

 

Peter comes to, woozy and disoriented. He’s sleeping in a real bed, meaning he’s crashed at the Tower again, but the sheets are thin and not like the guest room’s at all. He’s also on his stomach, and he usually sleeps on his back. Something’s up.

There are faint voices coming from his right, but his ears are ringing so badly he can’t understand it. After a few moments, it clears up enough for him to make out “--Shot himself, I brought him down here. We need to get to the bottom of this as soon as possible--”

“I’m doing what I can, I was gonna tell you that I sent Natasha and Clint out to check out the leads, if you would calm down--”

"You didn’t even believe him when _two_ people tried to kill him in twelve hours! Now it’s _three_!”

Peter blinks his eyes open, and harsh white hospital lighting makes his head throb almost immediately. Rhodes and Tony’s first instinct when Peter is injured is to argue, which means that he’s thoroughly freaked them out. “Hey,” he rasps to the ceiling. The arguing cuts off.

“How’re you feeling, bud?” Tony’s voice asks.

Peter can feel that the bullet’s been removed from his shoulder, but the wound isn’t healing up as fast as it would usually. “Could be better.”

Tony scoffs. “I’ll say. I let May know you were sticking around here a while longer.”

“Oh, thanks. And thanks for the help earlier, Rhodey. I’m gonna be on my way now.”

Both of them get ready to stop him, but as soon as Peter tries to flip over, his shoulder erupts in more pain and Peter has to stop moving. “Maybe I’ll chill here for a couple more hours, that works too.”

“No, yeah, you’re grounded until further notice,” Tony says.

“Uncool!”

Tony crosses his arms in a way that is extremely final. “We need to make sure you’re safe while you recover. This is the most secure location we can keep you right now.”

“In case you forgot, I just got attacked here. In the tower. A dude put a gun to my head _and_ I dropped my juice,” Peter wheezes. “Have you fixed your security problem?”

“I don’t like your tone,” Tony snaps.

Rhodes heads for the door. “I’ll get you some more juice, Spidey.”

 

The next time Peter is awake, Clint’s at his bedside and is solving a Rubik’s Cube by peeling off all of the colored stickers and placing them in the correct order. The pain from Peter’s burns has subsided to a throb, and his shoulder feels a little less on fire, which is an improvement, but he’s still sore. He might as well have just done a triathlon with small children holding onto his legs.

“There’s your juice, kiddo,” Clint says, nodding to the bedside table.

“Oh, bless you.” When Peter tries to move, his everything protests, but he eventually gets himself off of his stomach, into a kneeling position, and takes the glass of orange juice. “Stuck babysitting?”

Clint finishes cheating his way through the Rubik’s Cube and mixes it up to start over again. “Watch duty’, is what Rhodes called it.”

“Hmm.”

“Sorry we didn’t believe you earlier.”

Peter laughs, but it’s shaky and he sees the juice wobble in his hand. “Water under the bridge.”

“No, you almost got _murdered_ , it’s kind of a big--” Clint finally looks up at him, and reaches out to catch the glass when Peter’s hand shakes so bad the juice starts to slosh out of it. “Woah, easy. Let’s take it easy for a second, Tarantula Boy.”

“More like Trauma Boy,” Peter says, and laughs in a way that makes it sound like he’s just eaten broken glass. He’s really not proving to anyone he’s healthy enough to leave the medical wing, huh. “I think my blood sugar’s low.”

“No, I think you’re freaking the hell out. Can you breathe?” Clint sets the juice and the Rubik’s Cube down. Peter takes a breath, realizing that he hasn’t done so in a very long time, which is why his vision is starting to get a little fuzzy. “Okay. Breathe. I’ll give you your juice back in a second. For your low blood sugar.”

Peter laughs again, the noise still grating and wrong, but breathing is helping his panic subside a little. “Fuck off.”

"Respect your fucking elders.” Clint takes a very exaggerated deep breath for Peter to mimic. “Okay. Good, that’s--you’re doing great. Do you need more pain meds, or anything?”

“No.” Peter makes grabby hands at the juice, and Clint hands it back to him. “Thanks. Hey, do you at least believe I’m being targeted by a shady organization, now?”

Clint doesn’t crack a smile at that particular joke. “I shouldn’t have questioned you in the first place,” is all he says on the matter, and then he goes back to his Rubik’s Cube.

 

He can tell something’s happening, because no one’s on guard duty and instead he’s getting checked on every ten minutes by another team member in a hurry, all of which refuse to give him an explanation. It’s been about ten hours in the medical wing (at least he thinks it has, there’s no window in the room and no clocks either), and Peter’s wounds have made no progress whatsoever. Despite this worrying development, the others seem to have something important they’re all working on.

Clint swoops by the open door of his room, shooting finger guns at him. “You all good? Hungry at all? There’s leftover pizza.”

Peter fixes him with a look. “What’s going on.”

It’s too late. Clint is shaking his head and leaving with only a parting “Nothing to worry about.”

Despite his head hurting and his sense of balance pitching a little when he first stands, Peter’s able to walk just fine, and he takes off into the hallway, turning left towards the elevators to make his way up to the main common room. That’s where the planning will be taking place, five floors away from Peter’s enhanced hearing.

The windows are all dark; in fact, they’re opaque, not showing any of the outside world and presumably not letting anyone else see inside.

“Pete,” a voice says right behind him, and Peter jumps so badly that he finds himself hanging from the window, five feet up with his heart pumping and his injuries screaming.

It’s Rhodes, staring up at him in disbelief. “Sorry, I thought you heard me coming. You okay?”

Peter feels like he’s about to pass out, the overexertion wasn’t a good idea. His spidey-sense might as well be gone, he hasn’t felt a twinge of it in days.

The idea that it has something to do with the thing he was stabbed in the first attack with is becoming more and more likely. It probably isn't poison, but maybe something to suppress his abilities? Whatever it is, he should definitely tell someone before it becomes a liability.

Slowly, he lets himself back down, trying to maintain any dignity he might have left. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing’s going on. Man, you should really be in bed--”

“Please don't lie to me.” Peter wants to crawl into a hole and die somewhere as his headache worsens. “I know something's happening.”

Rhodes sighs, then takes hold of Peter’s arm to start to guide him back to his room. “Natasha has a lead, she's making a game plan. We're all going to be out for a while.”

Panic tugs at Peter’s chest. “All of you?”

Rhodes doesn't turn his head, but he very obviously looks at Peter out of the corner of his eye. “Yeah, or most of us. It's just for a couple hours.”

So many things could happen in a couple hours--Peter getting kidnapped or shot or killed, someone burning down the Tower--and Peter doesn't know how to ask Rhodes to stay, or for _anyone_ to stay, honestly. “Oh. Okay,” he says instead, suppressing an actual tidal wave of anxiety. “That's cool.”

“We don't all _have_ to go...”

“Don't worry about it,” Peter says with a fake smile, even as his eye twitches. “Just a couple hours.”

 

It’s only eighteen minutes into the mission when the lights go out. Peter turns to try and grab at the comms left on his bedside table, but there’s nothing there, just darkness and loneliness and why is Peter losing his mind again--

Someone grabs his arm and he screams.

“Peter, it’s Rhodes,” Rhodes’s voice says. Peter can’t tell if it’s actually coming from Rhodes, because his spider-senses have decided to go on permanent vacation, but he _hopes_. The grip tightens to a painful degree and Peter feels his heart pound in his chest. Something feels wrong.

He tugs, trying to dislodge his arm, but it’s ineffective.

What feels like a needle jabs his arm, like the needle he’d felt a few days before, and then--“Peter?” says Rhodes’s voice from a different corner of the room, and Peter wrenches his arm out of the first person’s grip with some difficulty, scrambling away (he’s too late they already stabbed him with something he’s going to die).

He creeps back on the bed, then inches up the wall as silently as he possibly can, holding his breath so neither of the people in the room can find him. Of course it wasn’t really _Rhodes_ , none of the Avengers wanted to stay and protect him and he knew he was by himself, how could he be so stupid? What had they put in him this time?

The room is so eerily still, there couldn’t possibly be someone else there.

“I don’t know who the other guy is but you’ve gotta trust me, kiddo, come this way,” says one Rhodes. It’s dark and Peter’s already forgotten which one talked first, his head hurts and his spider-sense is gone and he just wants _May_ back, he wants to be at home with her and watching America’s Next Top Model and drinking hot chocolate, before any of this happened.

A gun fires and Peter hears the bullet smash into the wall an inch from his side. He covers his mouth to muffle his panicked breathing, but he hears someone step up onto the bed, the springs creaking under their weight, and he presses himself into the corner between the walls and the ceiling as tightly as he can. He doesn’t know what happened to the lights, but he has the feeling that neither of the voices he heard were the real ones--the real Rhodes would be throwing blind punches already and Peter hasn’t heard any kerfuffle.

FRIDAY speaks up from the ceiling. “Disruption detected. Full lockdown commencing in thirty seconds.”

One of the Rhodeses says, hot breath two inches from his face, “We’ll be back, Peter.”

When the lockdown has shuttered all the windows in the tower and used a backup generator to put the blue emergency lights on, Peter finds himself on the ceiling of an empty room with no sign that anything at all had happened besides some darkening bruises on his arm from where someone had grabbed him and a bullet hole in the wall. Peter drops back down onto the ground, shuts and seals the door to his room so that it can only be opened from the inside.

He sits on the bed, wraps a blanket around himself, and feels like he’s five and alone and waiting in his dark house for his parents to get home from the airport, shaking and jumping at every sound.

 

He hears the lockdown get cancelled about two hours later, the real lights come back on and he hears metal shutters retract from the windows and a gentle announcement from FRIDAY saying that it’s safe for Peter to open the door now, that it’s the real Avengers and he doesn’t have anything to worry about.

Peter stays rooted to his bed, hugging his knees to his chest.

Someone who sounds like Tony knocks on his door a few minutes later and says, “Hey, what happened? Why did lockdown get activated?”

Peter can’t move.

The knock comes again. “Spidey, are you okay in there?”

Somewhere down the hall calls, “Is he safe?” and it’s Rhodes’s voice but what if it isn’t _Rhodes_ what if it’s one of those people again who seem to be able to get in wherever they want and what if they’re here to take apart the entire team like they said they were going to and Peter _can’t let them know he’s here_

“I don’t know,” Tony’s voice says. He sounds anxious, and Peter wants so badly to let him in and get some kind of reassurance that he’s going to be safe, but he can’t risk it. “Spidey, it’s me, I need you to let me know you’re okay in there.”

The knocking intensifies into banging, and Peter pulls the blanket tighter around him, like that’s going to do something to deflect a bullet. Stark doesn’t give up; if anything, he just gets more frantic. “Parker, kid, you need to let me in so I know you’re okay. We shouldn’t have gone on this stupid fucking mission, Rhodey, what if he’s hurt in there! FRIDAY, let me in, this is an emergency!”

FRIDAY responds that it isn’t an emergency, as no one is in imminent mortal danger, and Stark swears again. “Is he in there, at least, can you tell me that?”

Peter squeezes his eyes shut, praying that FRIDAY won’t give him away, and she doesn’t. She stays silent, and something has finally gone right today.

“Okay, I’ve had enough of this shit. Get Barton,” Tony says to Rhodes, low enough that Peter wouldn’t have picked it up without his enhanced hearing, and he hears someone run off down the hallway. Tony starts talking again. “Peter, if you’re safe in there, please just say something? I’m sorry we left you here by yourself, that was--that was really dumb of me and it won’t happen again.”

The apology is nice to hear, and maybe the only apology Stark has ever given in his life, but Peter is preoccupied trying to figure out how to keep Clint from getting into the room. There aren’t any windows, but there’s a vent in the ceiling over by the door and Peter’s searching for his webshooters, clumsily strapping one to his wrist and stumbling over his feet to get across the room and seal it up as quickly as he can.

He covers the vent with so much web he doesn’t think Thor could get through it, and right as he’s finishing, something slams into the cover and Peter skitters backwards, swallowing his fear and trying to stay silent.

He’s not fast enough. “Stark, I saw him,” Clint shouts. “He’s in here.”

Peter covers his mouth with his hand, not that there’s any point in being quiet anymore, he’s been given away.

“Hey, kid, listen,” Clint’s voice is urgent, “you’re safe, it’s just us.”

“Y-you’re not _real_ ,” Peter chokes out, his lungs hardly getting enough air to make any noise at all. “Why won’t you _leave me alone_?”

“Of course we’re real.” Whoever has Clint’s voice pushes on the grate, but the webs hold it in place.

Out in the hallway, the person who says he’s Stark stops banging on the door and asks, “Was someone else here?”

It’s getting hard for Peter to see straight, his head is spinning from lack of oxygen, but--he needs to keep himself stable, FRIDAY will open the door if it turns into an emergency. “Two of them were here, th-ey said they were Rhodey but they weren’t, it was so dark--”

“Parker, breathe,” Stark says, not at all sounding like he’s following his own advice. “You need to let us in right now.”

The person in the vents throws all their weight at the vent and the cover buckles. Peter makes a terrified noise and covers his head with his arms, and hears someone come crashing down into the room.

He moves back as much as he can, colliding with the side of the bed, but he stops when he sees that it’s really Clint, sort of writhing from the pain of impact with the ground. Clint turns his head and sees Peter, and waves.

There’s a brief pause, and Clint rolls over and gets to his feet, all five feet nine inches of him radiating concern. He slowly approaches Peter, who’s on the ground and, for lack of a better word, cowering, and kneels next to him, looking him over. “Are you hurt?” he asks. Without Peter even answering, Clint finds the bruising on Peter’s arm and stares at it, perhaps realizing Peter isn’t so crazy after all. “Can you tell us what happened?”

Peter just shakes his head, and Clint doesn’t push.

 

He wakes up and there’s something poking into his arm. All things considered, Peter doesn’t think he can be blamed for his reaction; he sits up as fast as he can and goes to rip out whatever’s under his skin but someone grabs his wrist and pulls it back--his other arm is held down so he can’t jostle it too much, which hurts his bullet wound and--holy shit, if this isn’t the worst way he’s ever been woken up. “Peter, we need to get a blood sample--”

“Get it _out_ ,” he whines, struggling against whoever it is, but it’s still another few seconds before gloved hands remove the needle and his arms are released. Peter scoots back from the people surrounding his bed, trying to get oriented, and the only reason he doesn’t flip out is because nobody’s trying to restrain him further.

Someone puts a light hand on his knee, but he flinches and breaks contact.

There’s silence for a few seconds, in which Peter’s head stops spinning and he scopes out his surroundings. He’s back in the room in the medical wing, Dr. Banner labelling and packing up several vials of what’s definitely Peter’s blood, Natasha and Clint perched on the end of his bed, and Rhodes and Tony posted by the door, presumably to block Peter’s way if he tries to escape.

“We shouldn’t have done that without permission, sorry,” Dr. Banner says. “Clint just noticed that there was a mark like you’d gotten injected with something, and we needed to check it out.”

Peter tries a smile that turns out crooked and falls off his face fairly quickly. “While we’re on the subject, that happened last week too, so.”

“Sorry, run that by me again?” Stark asks.

Peter laughs, the sound high and breathy and fake, because the tone of Stark’s voice is the one he gets before he absolutely flies off the handle. “I got injected twice, is what I’m saying.”

“And you didn’t think--!” Stark glares. “You didn’t think that _telling us this_ was a good idea?”

Peter stares right back at him. He doesn’t want to back down, but he also has no logical defense for his actions (or lack thereof). To be honest, it’s very hard for him to think about anything with Stark looking like he’s about to obliterate him.

"When exactly did you get it into your head that you were supposed to keep secrets from me? Who told you that that was okay?” Stark rubs a hand over his face and turns away, motioning to Peter and obviously making some kind of _can you believe this kid_ facial expressions.

“Okay, maybe don’t get mad at the kid when he _does_ tell you stuff, then,” Clint says, rolling his eyes, and Natasha nods sagely next to him. Peter wants to hug both of them (he would, if Natasha wouldn’t try to stab him).

“Don’t tell me how to parent,” Stark snaps.

“You’re not my fucking parent,” Peter snaps back. Clint snorts, covers it badly with a cough.

“He has a point, Tony,” Rhodes says, which is probably the only thing that keeps Stark from exploding.

Banner zips up his high-tech briefcase holding the samples, and stands, awkwardly clearing his throat and effectively removing himself from the argument by simply leaving the room to go work. Peter wishes he could do the same.

Stark rounds back on Peter. “Do not keep this shit a secret from me again,” he demands.

Peter gives him a thumbs-up, which Stark must decide he’s satisfied with.

After that confrontation, the excitement kind of dies down while they wait for the results of the blood tests. Most of the Avengers drift in and out of the room, eventually leaving just Natasha with Peter. She’s the only one that’s stuck around the whole time, knowing that Peter needs some kind of reassurance that he’s not alone.

“I will do what I can to destroy them, Peter,” she says later that afternoon, without looking up from her book. Her hair is blonde these days, she’s trying to fly undercover in a world where almost everyone knows who she is.

“I appreciate it.” Peter rubs his eye, glancing up from his phone.

She almost smiles. “We forget sometimes that you’re so young.”

Peter is close to being annoyed by that, but he figures out that it’s actually kind of a huge compliment coming from her, so he just shrugs and doesn’t protest, just goes back to scrolling through Ned’s Twitter. He feels chill, or something adjacent to chill, for the first time in a while. It probably comes with having an internationally-feared assassin at the end of your bed.

 

Dr. Banner comes back with the test results later. Apparently it’s some kind of huge lead that makes him whisper the implications of the results to Tony and Natasha out in the hallway, but before he gets the door closed, Peter does manage to hear that the serum in those needles had been some kind of depressant on Peter’s senses and had suppressed most of the healing and reflex portions of his powers. Which makes sense, given the fact that Peter hasn’t felt his spidey-sense in what feels like twelve years at this point, and his bullet wound hasn’t healed (if anything, it hurts more).

"Secrets secrets are no fun,” Peter tells the empty room, looking around and bracing for an attack that could happen while nobody else is there.

To Banner’s credit, when he pokes his head back into the room, he looks guilty for leaving him alone. “I just think we can trace the serum back to who made it, and Tony can get into the SHIELD documents we need. I don’t want you to get involved with this part, you’re the target.”

Peter doesn’t particularly like being called a target. He just nods and looks at his hands and wishes Natasha would come sit down again so he can feel safe. She doesn’t disappoint, even going so far as to turn down the request to go work on finding the source.

“I’m hanging out with Parker right now,” she tells Banner, and shuts the door in his face. Sitting back down on the bed, she looks over and sees Peter watching her. “What?”

“Nothing!” Peter looks back down. “Just, uh. Thanks for staying.”

He hears a soft “yeah,” come from her, almost fond. “You were checking up on your friends earlier,” she accuses a few seconds later. When he manages to make eye contact, she’s studying his expression carefully. “Do you want to see them?”

Peter desperately wants some kind of friend to be with him right now, but with the huge target painted on his head, that’s not a smart idea. “No.”

“You seem lonely,” Natasha says. It’s not out of pity, which he appreciates. Just an observation.

“I need to keep them safe,” Peter says, and that’s that. She doesn’t question him, doesn’t try to get him to promise to change, and he decides she’s the most understanding person he’s ever met.

 

It’s a quiet afternoon. It’s a quiet night, too, Natasha calmly reading the whole time, only looking up from her book when Peter ventures to start conversation (they both know he’s not up to much and she leaves it be when he runs out of steam again).

When the lights flicker around one in the morning, however, her gaze snaps to Peter, who’s already looking to her in a panic. Setting her book down, she turns to put her face to the two possible entrances: the vent and the door. With her foot, she presses the button on a lantern she’d set down earlier, giving the promise that there will be a backup light source.

Peter feels kind of useless compared to her, but he puts his game face on and tries to breathe steadily. “Do you--do you think that--”

“ _Shh_ ,” she hisses, turning her head just a little as she listens to something. The lights go out again, the outage lasting for a few seconds before they come back on. Natasha draws a gun and gets ready, and Peter calls Tony on his cell phone and holds it to his ear.

“Kid, what’s up?” Tony’s voice is loud and startles Peter at first, but he gets it together. Maybe he doesn’t cover this up as well as he thinks, because Natasha gives him a weird look before going back to watching the entrances.

“Can you--can you check. Can you check the lights on--”

“On your level? Yeah. Is everything okay?” There’s a brief pause in which Peter doesn’t respond. “Everything seems fine, it’s probably just a wiring issue. You’re going to be fine, don’t worry, Peter.”

Peter scrunches his eyebrows, his anxiety only increasing. Something’s definitely wrong with the inflection of Tony’s voice, he sounds too _nice_ , and Peter’s becoming increasingly sure that it isn’t Tony on the other end of the line. “Mr. Stark, are you…”

The lights flicker a couple times, effectively cutting him off. FRIDAY speaks up from the ceiling. “Foreign air contaminant detected.”

Natasha says, “Fuck.” She gestures to indicate she’s talking to Peter. “How long can you hold your breath?”

Peter’s breathing is only speeding up. He hangs up the phone and puts it down before he can drop it. “Uh.”

“Focus, Peter,” she snaps, and that breaks him out of his panic enough to start to focus on regulating his breathing. “Okay, good, keep doing that, I’ll tell you when you need to hold it.”

The lights go out for real this time. There are light footsteps in the hallway. Natasha whispers, “Now,” and a split-second after Peter has taken a big breath, people charge into the room. In the limited light of the lantern, he sees some sort of smoke billowing in with them.

They’re wearing gas masks or something, Peter can’t make it out. He sees Natasha--more smoke--someone coming towards him and he hears shouting--hissing--lights crackling and he thinks he’s blocking most of whatever is coming at him but something drives into his stomach and he loses all his air.

He tries to swing back at whoever it is but they catch his wrist, twisting his arm. He inhales sharply to scream as he hears bones snap, getting the gas in his lungs, coughing, and inhaling even more. Vaguely, he sees a flash of blonde and the person’s being knocked away from him, onto the ground.

What’s worrying is that his arm doesn’t move when he tells it to.

“Anti-contamination measures deployed. For accelerated cleansing, open a window,” FRIDAY chimes in cheerfully from the ceiling.

Despite this, the smoke has filled the room and is making the dim lighting even hazier. Peter feels something get pulled over his head and he tries to push the someone off with his good arm, but he finds it’s Natasha’s face behind the gas mask and she’s trying to put his own mask on him.

Someone drops in from the ceiling, but before Natasha can fire her gun both she and Peter realize it’s Clint, sporting his own mask. “Tasha, we need to get him out of here,” he says, stepping over fallen attackers.

“How many of them are here?” she asks.

He doesn’t respond, looking at her a moment too long and Peter’s heart leaps, terrified that it’s not real Clint, that they’re being tricked, he needs to run--

Clint motions to Natasha, and she pushes Peter out of the room. A month ago, Peter would have been fine taking off and getting out of the building and he wouldn’t have needed protection, but it isn’t a month ago. It’s now, and Peter’s in pain and he’s possibly high off whatever gas is in this room, and he needs to tell Natasha that Clint isn’t the real Clint.

The hallway is almost completely dark, besides the emergency lights in a strip on the ceiling. Clint creeps towards the stairwell, rounding corners very carefully and constantly looking back to check on Peter, who’s being ushered along by Natasha.

Peter’s unsteady on his feet and feeling drowsier by the minute, and he can’t feel his arm but it’s definitely broken, the elbow is pointing the wrong way. He turns around. “Clint’s not real,” he whispers.

Natasha rolls her eyes and pushes him onward, giving no indication that she’s heard him.

After a few minutes of little to no progress, the two agents sit him down against the wall. Both of them disappear for what feels like ten seconds, but then they’re back and there are more bad guys on the floor.

Clint taps Peter’s face and asks, too loudly, “Peter, do you know what they want with you?”

Peter looks to Natasha, pleading, trying to get her to realize that there’s something wrong, something’s different about Clint. Perhaps she can’t see his face well enough through the mask (when he tries to take it off, she pulls his hand back away from it, so there’s no hope there).

“If they wanted you dead, why wouldn’t they have just shot you?” Clint presses.

Peter sees Natasha signing, her hands moving more quickly than Peter can see them, which means that Clint’s hearing aids are missing and there’s no way he can hear or see what Peter’s saying through the gas mask. A huge wave of relief crashes over him--it explains Clint not responding earlier. It means Peter’s with people he can trust.

“False alarm,” Peter tells Natasha.

Natasha gives him a look that says _no shit_.

“That needs to be set,” Clint says, pointing to Peter’s mangled arm. “He’s gonna start healing soon, it’ll be worse if it heals wrong the first time.”

Mouth set in a firm line, Natasha reaches over and takes Peter’s arm. Peter, realizing what’s happening, shakes his head and tries to pull away. “Wait, no! No no no--”

Clint holds him down, maintaining a constant string of what’s probably encouraging words while Natasha moves his elbow back into place. Peter makes a guttural noise that he tries hard to muffle. It’s over in a second, but now he can feel how much his arm hurts and his stomach is rolling over itself.

“We should start moving again,” Natasha says, then presumably signs the same. She makes some kind of meaningful eye contact with Clint before getting to her feet and pulling Peter up too.

“Where’s everyone else?” Peter asks, suddenly hit with the realization that there must be other people stuck here too.

Natasha doesn’t answer him, and Clint doesn’t hear him. “Are they okay?” Peter asks (is that his voice?). “We should...go get them, right?”

Natasha’s response sounds frustrated, but her words blur together into word soup and Peter doesn’t understand them.

Blinking turns out to be a monumental task, his eyelids feel too heavy to open once he’s closed them, and he can’t tell if he’s ended up on the ground or not. Somewhere, he registers that there are vague fighting sounds above him, and then he’s being pulled somewhere, by his broken arm, by someone who definitely isn’t Natasha or Clint.

Peter drags his eyes open, finding himself at gunpoint, again, facing his friends. At this point, he’s sort of used to this situation, and kind of wishes they would just get on with it.

“What’s your deal?” he mumbles.

“How do you think New York will react to seeing one of their beloved heroes murdered?” asks the person holding him up, whispering close in his ear and making Peter squirm. “I think they’d at least like to know who you are.”

“He’s just a kid,” Clint says.

“He’s a kid who has ruined lives,” Peter’s captor says (damn, Peter doesn’t actually have much of a rebuttal to that), “so I’m ruining his. I’ve already gotten some major blows in.”

"What do you mean?” Natasha demands.

“Oh, you know, Ned Leeds and. What’s her name--Michelle Jones?”

Peter sees red.

He pushes past all the smoke-induced haze in his body and slams his head back into his captor’s, drives his elbow into his stomach, reaches up with his good arm and uses all his strength to roll him over his shoulders and slam him into the ground. The gun goes off, the bullet uselessly hitting the ceiling, and Peter smacks the gun out of his hand.

Everything’s a blur, he doesn’t even know what he’s doing and he doesn’t know how to stop. He gets punched in the face, cracking his mask, so he punches back, he should definitely stop using his broken arm to hit the dude but he _can’t_ \--this guy _has gone after his friends_ \--

Hands are pulling him back, away from the intruder, back up to his feet. Peter sees for the first time the damage he’s done, and his stomach lurches. His elbow is all wonky again, and the pain is setting his teeth on edge. The guy sits up, watches Peter struggle to get back to him, and Peter can see his eyes crinkle up in a smile under the mask.

The lights in the hallway flash back on, and Peter sees more blood than he’d thought he would. He stumbles back, and Clint catches him.

Having the lights back on has to be a good sign, right? That means someone’s back in control, hopefully?

“Have you checked on your aunt today?” the guy asks through a split lip, seemingly sensing he doesn’t have much time left.

“Leave her alone,” Peter snarls. His heart is pounding, he feels Clint tighten his grip on his good shoulder to hold him back.

“I sent a few people, just to check up on her for you.” He still has that smile in his eyes, like he’s won, he slowly, agonizingly gets to his feet, not losing eye contact for a second.

“Stay where you are!” someone commands. Probably Natasha, she’s the only one who isn’t preoccupied with keeping Peter on his feet.

Peter can’t breathe. Everything he’s done to keep bad guys distanced from his aunt has meant nothing, everything’s his fault. His friends could be dead right now. _May could be dead right now_ \--

Natasha moves herself in front of Peter, and the man doesn’t come any closer. He does say, “People don’t have to keep getting hurt if you just come with me, Parker.”

“Nobody’s getting hurt, regardless,” a voice says from the end of the hall. Peter watches Tony in an Iron Man suit fire a blast at the man, who crumples to the ground. “Except you.”

“Always so dramatic,” Clint says, releasing Peter’s shoulder, now that he’s sure Peter isn’t going to go and fight someone. Peter doesn’t think he’s going to be able to go anywhere, the relief he’s feeling is quickly replacing the adrenaline that had been keeping him on his feet. His head swirls, he hears a “aw, no, Peter,” and finds himself sitting, propped against a wall.

Clint turns out to be the one who had caught him. Natasha takes her mask off, gives Peter a quiet nod of reassurance.

“I’m going to secure the area,” Clint says. This means he’s making sure he’s not missing out on kicking any possible ass in a three-block radius. He talks over his shoulder as he takes off down the hall. “Take care of him, Tasha.”

Peter reaches out with his not-broken arm and grabs onto Natasha’s hand (it speaks volumes about how bad he looks that she doesn’t yank her hand away). There are noises like the Iron Man suit is opening, then Tony appears to Peter’s right. “We’re taking you to a doctor.”

“Are May and MJ and Ned...”

“They’re fine, I got Daredevil to keep an eye on them, Happy’s on his way to pick them up and bring them to see you.” Tony takes the mask off of Peter’s face so he can get some fresh air.

The idea of seeing May again is incredible, but Peter can’t let her see him in this state, he can’t be near her, he could hurt her, or someone else could come and get her and he wouldn’t be able to do a thing about it. “Don’t bring them here.”

“Pete, you’re fine. I’ll explain more when you’re not about to pass out.”

“I’m not about to---”

Natasha says, “Yes you are,” and Tony puts a hypodermic needle into Peter’s arm. Peter reacts violently, almost hitting Natasha in the face in his desperation to get away--where in the entire hell had Tony gotten that needle so quickly--but he’s not difficult to subdue, in his present state.

 

MJ and Ned burst into his room an hour after he wakes up. His arm has been put into a cast, he’s taken a shower, the bandages on his shoulder have been changed. He feels better, having been put into a larger room with a big window and having gotten some shut-eye (he has politely asked Stark to not drug him again, but Stark probably isn’t going to take that to heart, because he’s a bastard).

“Oh, yikes.” MJ looks him over.

Peter struggles to sit up, and neither of them move to help. He’d thought he’d be okay with seeing them, he’s so happy that they’re alive and safe, but he’s still sort of panicky from earlier. “You guys shouldn’t be here.”

"Uh, okay,” MJ says, rolling her eyes.

“I’m serious, this isn’t safe.”

“That’s what she said,” Ned says, plonking down onto the end of Peter’s bed.

MJ sits in the chair next to the bed, doing her best to look totally chill with the situation. Meanwhile, Ned’s watching Peter with this anxious expression that’s making Peter feel worse and worse. Despite the fact that Ned was probably attempting to be cool when he walked in, he’s clearly not very calm.

Peter rubs the back of his wrist over his eye. He’s sitting sort of hunched over so his burns don’t rub against the pillows, and he might look a little like a beat-up cave gremlin. No reason for his friends to be freaking out. “How was hanging out with Daredevil?”

“He’s this super dweeby lawyer in real life,” MJ says. “Ned’s still getting over it.”

“He’s a _lawyer,_ Peter.” Ned sighs. “He doesn’t even look muscley in real life, because he was wearing a dorky suit.”

“He’s nice though,” Peter says blandly, not having the energy to fully defend Matt. “And a total snack.”

“Hell yeah he is,” MJ contributes.

“ _Right_?” Peter says, and feels the ghost of a smile on his face. “Handsome devil.”

“Under normal circumstances, I would smite you.”

“He wasn’t super excited to babysit,” Ned says. He says something else, too, but then Peter sees May appear in the doorway behind her, her face wet with tears and looking like a complete wreck, obviously not taking the news of how Peter’s doing very well.  

Peter shuts down. He doesn’t know if there’s any outward indication that it happens, but at seeing his aunt, the switch flips from him being able to handle the day he’s had to him being completely _unable_ to handle it and he just ceases to function.

He stares past his friends to the wall, he hears breathing scraping his ears, he sees someone’s hands clench around the edge of his blanket out of the corner of his unfocused vision. He should listen to what Ned’s saying, him acting like this is probably only adding to the reasons why Ned should hate him--

Peter blinks and May is standing at the edge of the bed, trying to pry someone’s hands off of the blanket. Someone’s talking, but it’s a humming noise that Peter can’t seem to decipher. Looking around the room, the clock on the wall says half an hour has passed.

Peter can’t tear his eyes away from the clock, trying to figure out where the time went. He couldn’t just have spaced out for that long, could he?

“Aunt May?” someone asks. Peter realizes it’s himself, his voice weirdly blank of emotion.

"Yeah, hey, honey,” May says, sounding relieved and definitely like she’s crying.

“Sorry,” Peter says, releases the blanket, uncurls his hands. They’re sore from being in one position for so long.

He’s so drained, he doesn’t even flinch when May moves and he sees that Ned and MJ are still there at the end of the bed, MJ’s hand gripping Ned’s shoulder like it’s holding both of them together. He looks away from them again, blinking in an attempt to make his eyes focus on something.

“Is he okay?” Ned’s asking, clearly spooked.

May says, “He’ll be fine. Why don’t you two go upstairs and get a snack, and you can come back later.” She gives them a watery smile, and Ned and MJ nod and file out behind her without more protesting.

May turns back to Peter. “Mr. Stark was telling me about what happened.”

Peter shrugs one shoulder. The good shoulder.

“I was so worried.” May sits down on the bed, puts a hand on his knee, and looks him over, scoping out his injuries. “Can you tell me what you need? I’m not a mind-reader.”

Instead of a coherent response, Peter feels big, fat tears start making their way down his face, and he falls forward and latches onto May in a rough approximation of a one-armed hug, coughing and sniffing and generally being the ugliest crier on the planet.

“Oh, kiddo.” May pulls him into her chest and smooths his hair, seemingly accepting that she’s not going to be moving for a while. Her voice is quiet. “I wish you had just told me what was happening.”

“I didn’t want you to--” Peter chokes on his tears in his rush to defend himself, and May just rubs his back as he coughs. “I didn’t want you to be in danger,” he finally rasps, sniffling.

“What about _you_?”

Peter shakes his head. “They coulda--could’ve tracked you, and--I need to keep you _safe_.”

She moves back to look at him, and Peter can see that she’s crying as well. “Peter, you need to be kept safe too, I need you safe _too_. We need to be there for each other. You don’t need to be alone and scared.”

He forces a laugh and looks away, unable to keep looking at May’s face when it’s so open and loving and upset.

“I’m serious.”

 " _Okay_. I got it.”

“I hope you do.” May leans forward and kisses his forehead. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” Peter mumbles, and wipes his eyes with his blanket. The green hospital gown he’s wearing doesn’t have sleeves, which would normally take the brunt of his tears. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay, baby.” May puts a hand up to his face to wipe away more tears, and that just makes Peter start crying even more. “It’s okay. Let it out.”

“I’m sorry.” He leans into her hand, and realizes that he can pretend all he wants, but he’s still just a dumb scared kid. “Sorry for scaring you.”

“You’re okay.” May smiles. “What are teenagers for?”

 

MJ and Ned slink in a couple hours later, like they’re trying to sneak past whoever’s keeping an eye on Peter’s room. May had probably told them to let Peter rest, judging by the whispers they’re passing back and forth and the abject terror Ned has on his face when the door bangs shut behind them.

“Great fucking going,” MJ says in a normal-volume voice, and Peter finds himself laughing hard enough that a wave of pain descends upon him.

Ned hears him gasping for air, sees his face contort in pain, and slams a hand down on the morphine pump. When Peter catches his breath, Ned’s in the chair next to his bed and MJ’s on the bed itself, crouched like a vulture because she doesn’t know how to sit like a normal person. The bisexual agenda.

“Hey, guys,” Peter says, his voice weak but genuine, once they’ve all waited a respectable amount of time and no adults have swooped in to shoo Ned and MJ away.

“Hi,” Ned responds, and waves.

“You look like shit,” MJ says.

“I feel like we’ve been over this.” Peter gestures with his cast-coated arm. His face is probably still blotchy from crying--it takes a long time for him to stop looking like a hot mess, sometimes. “I fought a bunch of bad guys.”

Ned whistles. “That’s hot.”

“You’re the worst.”

“If I’m the worst, how could I have done this?” Ned asks, and produces a brown paper bag from his backpack. Peter accepts the bag with no small amount of confusion.

Inside is a bagel, from the corner store in Queens Peter always stops by. Peter looks up, and both of his friends are cheesing.

“I’ve changed my mind,” he declares, and MJ no-scopes a high-five with Ned.

**Author's Note:**

> this means nothing but it doesn't have to mean anything i'm gay! i wrote huge chunks of this while drunk off my ass so enjoy it or don't, i really don't care
> 
> (To maybe be continued)


End file.
